Beer. We love it. And, yes, we here at Serious Eats sure do drink a lot of it. But recently, we started wondering: Where's the best place in the country to drink it? That is, if we could choose any city in this suds-crazy land as a beer destination, where would we go? To help us figure that out, we brought in beer experts and aficionados from around the country to state the case for their favorite beer towns, and asked our readers to vote for theirs. Which is truly the greatest beer city in the US? Keep reading to see the winners and the also-rans in our Great American Beer Brawl!

The Great American Beer Brawl

Read all about America's greatest beer cities, and check out the voting results below!

It cracks me up when yet another two-bit town is named America's “best beer city” in some pathetic poll. Why? Because all five bars on Main Street have craft beer on tap? In Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, you're essentially getting three great beer cities wrapped into one behemoth. And here, you can drink your face off without having to deal with cars.

In San Diego, we don't do beer for the faint of heart. Today, the “San Diego–style IPA” is recognized, emulated, and consumed in vast quantities all over the globe. But why drink beer under a black cloud when you could grab a gold medal winner and lie out for the afternoon on the soft white sand?

In the craft beer world, Denver is the king of the mountain. This is a city that boasts a depth and breadth of breweries that's tough to fathom—and hosts the grande dame of all beer festivals. Do 60,000 people come to your town to celebrate beer?

In Asheville, we don't drink to wash off the grime of urban grit or to swallow the stress of the rat race. Drinking is a way to support our neighbors and toast our good fortune for living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Here, drinking local beer isn't a fad. It's a lifestyle, an extension of the city's close-knit community—and it has deep roots.

Back in the 1980s, a few brewers built some of the first small breweries in the country in Portland, Oregon. They called themselves “microbrewers,” and created a beer culture that still exists here and nowhere else. Their pioneering spirit inspired other brewers to take risks, not only by opening breweries but by making bold, experimental beers.

What Tampa lacks in publicity, name recognition, and number of breweries, it makes up for in concentrated quality and unexplored coolness. And I'm letting you in on the secret: The greater Tampa Bay region—including the cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg, as well as surrounding counties—is the best destination for beer in the US that hardly anyone knows about.

Coming from San Diego, I'd always assumed that Vermont's reputation just had regional merit; that compared with, say, New York and Boston, Vermont was where the best beer was being made. But it turns out that Burlington gets it right—very right. Not only is this town producing some exceptional beers, it offers a downright delightful setting to enjoy them in.

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

Surprising all of us, but certainly none of the Tampa residents who ​surely did not vote more than once or ​launch some sort of internet campaign to get all their friends to do likewise, it's Tampa in a landslide!